Rules of the railroad crossing aren't hard to figure,  your truck is big, but the train is bigger.  Burma Shave

https://abcnews.go.com/US/dramatic-video-shows-amtrak-train-slamming-semi-truck/story?id=80619175

Noel

 

When we moved to Georgia my boss told me things were a little different there than what I might be used to in Manhattan. I'll never forget one of the important things. When two cars come an intersection with a 4-way stop it's not always the vehicle on the right that goes first like most places. Rather, in North Georgia, it's the one with the biggest tires.

4 hours ago, birdguy said:

Rules of the railroad crossing aren't hard to figure,  your truck is big, but the train is bigger.  Burma Shave

Dang! I guess I won't be getting that new white SUV after all... 🤪

yep  just  check out  utube  on  these  sort of  crashes  you  will  find  quite  a  few 😉

6 hours ago, W2DR said:

When two cars come an intersection with a 4-way stop it's not always the vehicle on the right that goes first like most places

Sue is going to kill me for this but the four most confused people in the world are four women drivers at a four way stop wondering who goes first.

Noel

That's easy to figure out Noel - it's the driver with the biggest.....

 

 

.....tires on her car.

How many women know what size tires are on their car except maybe Sue.  Hell, I don't know what size tires are on my car.  I never checked them.

Noel

No problem. All you have to do is look. It's easy to tell the big ones from the small ones. The big ones stand out. The small ones are seldom noticed.

Big ones??  Are we still talkin' bout tires?  Reminds me of my favorite sign outside the auto repair place...."Let us tire, brake, and shock you!" 

Noel, ROFLMAO! I once pulled up to a pump, and filled up my Volkswagen. Guy never came out. I finally went in to pay. He said " I thought you were putting water in it."  Doh, rear engine...not to mention hose from gas pump.

Reminds me of an old joke.

An elephant escaped from a circus in a small town and wound up in a woman's back yard.

She called the police and told them a huge strange animal was in her back yard with a huge tail.

"Well, what is he doing Maam?"

"He's pulling cabbages out of my garden with his tail."

"What's' he doing with them Maam?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you!"

Noel

 

He would have entered that crossing when the signal lights were off but that trailer bottomed out on the crest of the knoll over those tracks so he didn't have traction anymore. Basically he was a sitting duck. This is common with low floor trailers like that. Lowboy Trailers are the worst over railway tracks they can bottom out even more easily.

This picture shows it best, once you get stuck like that nothing you can do:

Why do they make them so low?  Shouldn't there be a minimum ground clearance for all types of vehicles and trailers?

When I first moved to Denver a lot of new construction was going on downtown.  Overloaded dump trucks were tearing up the streets and the citizens demanded something be done about it.  So the city council in all it's wisdom wrote a law that truck load weights be limited to how many axles the truck had.  Not weight per axle, mind you, but total weight for two axels for instance.  So truck owners continued to overload the trucks but towed a boat trailer for the third axel.

I don't know, but I'll bet the councilman who wrote the law could suddenly afford a condo in Aspen.

Noel

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

Why do they make them so low?  Shouldn't there be a minimum ground clearance for all types of vehicles and trailers?

Easier to load the vehicles on and off, and they don't have to install the hydraulic lifters like they used to on the bigger older ones. Basically just saves time and money and they are not as heavy and cheaper to make

Edited October 18, 20214 yr by Matthew Kane

They need to raise the approach roads so that they are level for a short distance before entering the railway crossing. Problem solved.